by Dan Davis
Edward III obtained, besides Guyenne and Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis, Agenais, Périgord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, the countship of Gaure, Angoumois, Rouergue, Montreuil-sur-Mer, Ponthieu, Calais, Sangatte, Ham and the countship of Guines.
What is more, these lands were to be held free and clear, without doing homage for them.
After twenty years of war against the mightiest kingdom in Christendom, King Edward III had established a truly mighty empire.
My own quest was also over.
It had taken far too long and I had almost destroyed us entirely. My decisions had led to the deaths of my brothers Thomas, John, and Hugh.
But we had uncovered the whole nest of snakes in the end. We had, perhaps, saved the lives of two kings and disrupted my brother’s plans for the domination of two nations.
Decades before, William had given the Gift to a number of French and English knights and left them with instructions on how to prepare for his return. I had been looking for them for so long and now, it was over. It was time to leave England and hide elsewhere for a few decades.
Eva would stay in London for a few years to manage the trade and the information network, posing as Stephen’s widow.
Stephen would move to Bristol and pretend to be Eva’s steward, taking care of things there. We would maintain correspondence and all would watch and listen for signs of William’s return.
I kissed Eva and embraced my brothers in the hall of the London house and went on my way.
England, on top of the world for a moment, did not fare well.
Prince Edward administered the lands of Gascony and all France, ruling like a king. But he became embroiled in the knotty and interminable web of shifting alliances between all the rulers in that part of the world, from Castile and Aragon to Poitiers and Bordeaux. He fought in dozens of battles where generally he won. And he wrestled in diplomacy with hundreds of lords where generally he failed.
And fate turned against our prince.
In 1367, when Edward was in his prime at thirty-seven years old, he was on campaign in the disgusting heat of a Spanish summer when his entire army fell to the bloody flux and other common maladies. The Prince was himself afflicted so terribly that he never fully recovered. His body went into a long and painful decline.
Some men whispered that it was divine punishment for his black dealings with this lord or that. Others thought he had been poisoned and it had rotted his body from the inside.
Over the coming years, he was stricken with dropsy so that his limbs and body would swell to enormous size. He could not even ride and had to be carried in a litter here and there. A shameful and emasculating fate.
One by one, his great friends and allies, like the capable soldier John Chandos, died.
In 1370, Edward’s eldest boy, another Edward who was just five years old, died from a resurgence of the Black Death.
The pestilence would return every few years and take more from our people. Mostly children, and so each generation was aggrieved in their hearts beyond all recovery.
It was the death of his eldest son and heir, on top of his own endless physical agonies, that broke the Prince’s will. There was another son, Richard, who would one day become King of England. But a man can only bear so much pain and, when he was back home in England for his boy’s funeral, Edward’s flux returned and drained him of his will.
Bloated, pale, and weak, our Golden Prince died in 1376 aged forty-five.
King Edward would make it just one more year before himself succumbing to age and the ravages of grief.
He was never the same after the storm. After the peace he had won. All his life, he had fought for victory and when he achieved it, he found himself broken by the effort.
His boundless energy and enthusiasm were gone. Used up in the fight. Perhaps it was the toll of decades of physical exhaustion and from being thumped about the head too many times in battle. God knows, that seemed to do for the wits of many a knight I have known.
After the peace, he passed much of the leadership of the realm onto his son and even though the Prince of Wales had struggled with international diplomacy in a way that the King never had, old Edward left him to it.
Queen Philippa, who had brought forth from her womb thirteen princes and princesses for England, died in Windsor in 1369 and the loss brought Edward very low indeed. He had loved her dearly.
His health failed him more and more and by the summer of 1377, he was never out of his bed. The King’s mind had long been failing but his wits were by then almost gone. His days were numbered and he would soon depart for Heaven.
My own heart was breaking at the news coming from England of the King’s demise. It was a risk, perhaps, but one I could not resist.
I went to see my king one last time.
***
Stephen’s wealth, connections, and well-placed agents bought the necessary access to the palace at Richmond and, after waiting all day, I was shown by one of Stephen’s men into the King’s bedchamber.
The smell was appalling and his servants all had cloths tied across their faces.
“Who is that lurking there?” the King said. His voice, once so powerful that in a single breath it could move the hearts of a thousand knights, had become the rasping whisper of a dying old man.
“It is Richard of Hawkedon, Your Grace,” I said, coming forward. “I thought you asleep.”
“Asleep? No, no. I never sleep. Never get enough. Too much to do. Come here, man.”
I went forward and bowed, before taking a knee beside him.
He frowned. “Is that you, Richard?”
“It is, Your Grace. I came to speak with you.”
“Well? What is it you have to say?” his eyes flicked up around the room. “Where are we? Is this… Villeneuve?”
“This is Richmond, Edward. We have not been at Villeneuve for twenty years. Twenty-five, perhaps. That was where the lords of Calais surrendered their town to you. After we beat the French at Crecy.”
“It seems like another life,” Edward whispered. The corners of his mouth twitched and he lifted a skeletal hand toward my face before letting it fall back to the bed. “Another life for me. But perhaps not for you, Richard. How is it that you are unchanged from that day to this? They always told me you were not one of us and now I see how right they were. Or have I truly lost my mind after all? You are an impostor, perhaps. His son, or grandson, pretending to be my friend.”
“They were right,” I admitted. “And yet I am the same man who was at your side that night in Nottingham when you were newly our king.”
“Do you recall it as I do, I wonder?”
He was testing me and his mind had degenerated so far that I am sure that he believed he was doing so with subtle cunning.
“I recall it clearly, Edward,” I said. “You were all so young. The lords around you were loyal but they needed a little encouragement and the belief that they could help you destroy Mortimer. And I watched from the edges as you slowly grew to become the man I knew you could be. After you married Philippa, you changed. Marriage often does that to a man but the stakes were so much higher for you than for ordinary men.”
“Oh,” he muttered, clutching at his sheets. “Dear Philippa. Gentle, compassionate Philippa. She was stronger than iron, you know. She would have had Mortimer’s throat slit in the night if it meant being done with him.”
I smiled at the thought. “I admit, sire, that for some time I planned to murder Roger Mortimer myself. My friends convinced me that it would destabilise the kingdom and of course they were right. But I kept a close eye on Mortimer and his bodyguards. Your mind may be going, Edward, but no doubt you recall the humiliation of the Great Council in Nottingham where Mortimer called you untrustworthy and accused your men of plotting against him.” My voice shook as I spoke and tears pricked my eyes. “You were the King and he spoke in such a way. The outrage could not stand and it was my friend Thomas who literally held me back from storming to Mortimer’s c
hambers that very night and delivering to you his head.”
Edward laughed at that. A laugh that ended in a cough. “Your friend had good sense. You talked me into taking action, finally.”
“You did not require much persuasion, Edward.”
He smiled. “No.”
“On the morning of the fateful day, I told you of my plan and you merely nodded. I was proud of you. Later, I gathered twenty-two of your companions and brought them to the culvert outside, below the castle, which you unlocked for us with your own hand.”
“Who were our companions that night, Richard?”
“Let me see. Montagu, Ufford, John Neville. John Moleyns was still there. The three Bohun brothers. Humps was perhaps twenty-one and Ned and William were not yet twenty.”
“Steadfast fellows,” Edward said. “Thank God for those men.”
“Thank God for those tunnels beneath Nottingham and for your courage. Our companions were in a very high state but you were the embodiment of calm and your steadiness in turn calmed them. It was quiet and we saw few servants but those we swiftly subdued. The garrison commander was loyal to you and so we were not challenged until we entered your mother’s apartments.”
“My mother,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Do you recall what she cried?”
“Your mother beseeched you most fervently. Fair son, she called, have pity on gentle Mortimer.”
Edward nodded in confirmation, though clearly it pained him to recall it and so I continued.
“Mortimer was in a chamber adjacent to hers and when I threw open his door, his men cried murder and attacked me. Two of them, I killed, though there were others I merely wounded. Mortimer was quick to give himself up rather than fight. As much as I wanted to paint the walls with traitor’s blood, I knew it would be better for you if I restrained myself.”
Edward chuckled in his throat. “Two dead and half a dozen wounded is my Richard when he restrains himself,” he said.
“I continued to restrain myself, if you recall. As the sun came up, we went out into the town and took all of Mortimer’s supporters lodged there into our custody. And soon, Mortimer received the justice that he deserved. I rejoiced at the sight of him dangling at the end of that rope. It pleases me still.”
“So long ago,” he sighed, “and yet also no more than a blink of the eye.” He squinted at me. “Do you never grow old, Richard?”
“Not so far.”
“What are you, Richard?”
A dozen thoughts crossed my mind.
I am a blood-drinking immortal. I am the progeny of a mighty ancient conqueror whom someday I must kill. I am the bastard son of a bastard son. I am cousin to Alexander and to Caesar. I am a murderer. A failure. A fool.
“I am a knight, my lord. An English knight.” I smiled. “A very old one.”
He narrowed his eyes. “How old?”
“I have lived over two hundred years.”
“Is this madness?” he asked, an edge of horror creeping into his voice. “Is it my madness?”
I took his hand. “Not this, my lord. Strange beyond reason and yet it is truth.”
He sighed and closed his eyes, so that I thought he was asleep. But he opened them and spoke earnestly. “Will you look after my son? See he makes a good king, will you? I think perhaps he does not know how much he needs the love of the people and the loyalty of the lords. Help him to know, will you, Richard?”
He had forgotten his son was dead. It would be the King’s grandson, Richard of Bordeaux, who would take the Crown. I did not have the heart to correct him.
“I will, Your Grace.”
He smiled and lay back.
It was a lie in more ways than one. I could not stay in England to watch over the young king to be.
“I failed, did I not?” he asked.
In many ways, perhaps he had. But he had done more, been more, than most men who ever lived.
“Failed? How can you say such a thing? You defeated France, my lord. Again and again.”
“God wanted me to stop,” he muttered.
“That He did. But He also helped you capture the King of France.”
“Oh yes.” His tone was one of surprise and he chuckled to recall it and I saw the merest hint of the energetic young man I had first known. “But that was not God but you, Richard, if my memory does not fail me.” He closed his eyes and his voice fell to a whisper. “You gave me France.”
I bowed my head. “I have lived a long time. Served many kings. You were a king that England deserved. And it has been an honour to serve you, Edward.”
Whether he heard me before he slept, I do not know, for I was escorted from the chamber.
Three days later, the King was dead.
***
After leaving England, I went to Castile but there were too many Englishmen there, fighting in free companies under veteran captains for this lord or that, and so I went to Italy.
I found the same there, only more so. Thousands of English soldiers in dozens of companies fighting for one city against another. Some companies rose and others fell. I was welcomed for my skill at arms in any of them but I had had enough of the base, mercenary nature of their endless squabbling. And so, I went further east for a while before eventually returning through the Italian wars to England.
Walt was beside me through all of it. He was proud to call himself Sir Walter of Hartest and he strove always to live with the honour of a knight. The fact that he failed more often than he succeeded could not be held against him, as all knights struggled so whether they were a peasant or a prince.
The code of chivalry was ever an ideal to reach for, and to sometimes fall short, rather than a standard to live by.
In truth, I could well have done without Walt’s constant stream of unsought opinions but not without his steadfast companionship.
Rob Hawthorn spent as much time as he could with his family until the talk of his agelessness grew to endanger the legacy of his good name.
It broke Rob’s heart to leave them but he had done his duty by making strong sons and daughters and had established a robust family line that would continue on down the centuries without him. His son, Dick, was a man grown by then and ready to inherit. Stephen helped Rob make a faked death by reporting the sinking of a ship that did not exist and so the son took over Rob’s land and became the head of his family. As is right and proper.
When Rob left England to join us in Italy, he left a kingdom in upheaval.
Richard II appeared at first to be another fine king in the making. When he was just a boy, he took a personal role in quelling the terrifying rebellion of the commoners of Essex and Kent. In 1381, the ungrateful masses of those Godforsaken counties stormed London, killing and robbing like crazed savages. Only the physical presence and the wise and goodly words of the young king served to calm them. After the fools were disbursed, they were rounded up and quite rightly sorted out once and for all. Sadly, this early success may have been Richard’s finest hour.
He lost his crown to his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who was a truly great knight in his youth and a rather mediocre king. But he fathered Henry V who took the throne shortly before I returned to England.
Henry V was, perhaps, an even greater king than Edward III. I was proud to serve him, though I was careful this time to avoid becoming his friend and companion.
I resolved to live and to fight like a knight but I could support the King from afar. This I did through my personal strength of arms, and those of my knights Sir Robert and Sir Walter, and through funding King Henry’s campaign with loans from the coffers of the White Dagger.
We fought France again, of course. And again, we thrashed them so completely that it shook the French to their souls.
During the Battle of Agincourt, our English steadfast archers fought like bloody heroes. They also, by order of the King, slaughtered a great mass of the captured French nobility, which much increased the numbers felled on the field.
It seemed as though England
was poised to subjugate all of France, for the French Crown was promised to Henry’s son and heir, who ruled as Henry VI.
But tragedy struck. The victorious Henry V was in his prime, the most celebrated man in Christendom and the most magnificent King of England who ever was, when he was destroyed by dysentery. Surely, the most ignominious way to meet one’s end.
Henry VI was just a boy when he inherited and, without the hero king, England’s nobles could not keep their hands around France’s throat for long. And when he grew to manhood, Henry VI was both weak and mad.
Dear old England suffered.
All through our weakest times, I fretted for us, as I knew that my brother would one day return to Christendom, and I feared that it would be at the head of a great army seeking to conquer it.
As it turned out, I was quite right about both his return and the army he was leading.
But it was decades more before my brother made his traitorous move.
We kept a close eye on the Black Forest but my grandfather and his sons lived quietly, ruling through fear over the villages nestling in the valleys around them. All it cost those people was the sacrifice of a lovely young woman every few years to the monster that lived in the woods and they could pretend to the outside world that all was well. One day, I would pray, one day, Lord, I will put Priskos and his sons to the sword. But I would have to grow far stronger, and I would have to defeat William first.
For the longest time, I believed that we had routed out William’s nest of immortals. We could find no more. Not in France or England, or Italy or Spain. Every trail led nowhere.
And then, after years of searching, we finally uncovered another one of William’s spawn in France. One we had missed. One that I had overlooked with my own eyes. A man lurking and biding his time in one guise or another for decades and centuries until his evil could be contained no longer.
When I finally found him, he had made himself into one of the great nobles of his time. A Marshal of France and a hero of the battles that threw the English out of his lands forever.